I keep having the issue of cable cards losing their decryption status in the cable card CP menu. Where it says decryption status usually it says ok, but when I start having problems it says no ECMs detected. The problems I am experiencing are sometimes I cannot tune to an encrypted channel (just get a black screen) or I get a picture, but no audio. Restarting the TiVo fixes the problem so thats what I have been doing at night the last few days. It's an annoyance, though and I have had Cox come out numerous times with new cards and I still have the same problem. The best answer I have gotten is that there is a handshaking problem and that is why I am randomly losing stations. Has anyone else experienced this?

Just had Cox here to install card(s). The installer was a very nice young man who admitted this was only the 2nd time he'd installed cards in a TIVO - BUT HE READ THE INSTRUCTION SHEET. Surprise! He had a multi-stream card & didn't even know it. He said he had picked up a couple of extra cards just today so thought they were probably brand new. He had already installed both cards before we realized we didn't need the 2nd one so he removed it once we made sure everything was working and everything is working beautifully - no problems at all. There was a little hitch getting the digital/premium channels but he had to go out to his truck & do something to close out his service call (code out??). He said this is the biggest mistake installers make - they forget this has to be done before everything will work. I had called Cox (twice) before I set up the service call & each time was told it would be $49.95 to do this plus a couple of other things that needed adjusting then when I called to make the appointment I was told that it would be $64.95 for installing 2 cards. We'll see what I end up being charged. And, oh, yes, the woman (Sonya) in sales with whom I had to talk since this is considered new service insisted that the cable cards weren't going to work to receive digital channels that they were only for HD!! I told her to go ahead & send the tech out & we'd see what happened. Side note: I don't actually have an HD set in that room but plan to get one - I just loved the idea of the increased disc size & getting rid of my cable box with which I'd had all kinds of problems. Keep your fingers crossed - I'm always wary when things seem to be working.

I keep having the issue of cable cards losing their decryption status in the cable card CP menu. Where it says decryption status usually it says ok, but when I start having problems it says no ECMs detected. The problems I am experiencing are sometimes I cannot tune to an encrypted channel (just get a black screen) or I get a picture, but no audio. Restarting the TiVo fixes the problem so thats what I have been doing at night the last few days. It's an annoyance, though and I have had Cox come out numerous times with new cards and I still have the same problem. The best answer I have gotten is that there is a handshaking problem and that is why I am randomly losing stations. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yep, have the same problem every now and then. I find turning away from the encrypted channel to a non-encrypted channel, then waiting a few seconds, and then back again usually clears it up, but it's annoying.

Yep, have the same problem every now and then. I find turning away from the encrypted channel to a non-encrypted channel, then waiting a few seconds, and then back again usually clears it up, but it's annoying.

Yep, have the same problem every now and then. I find turning away from the encrypted channel to a non-encrypted channel, then waiting a few seconds, and then back again usually clears it up, but it's annoying.

What I don't like is when it happens on recorded programs. An hour of black video.

Today was the big day for the installation of cable cards from Cox for my Series 3. I had read all of the postings and had printed all of the documentation for potential problems as well as the installation procedures.

I live south of Tucson and called Monday to make the appointment. It was scheduled for today, two days later, for the time slot of 10:00 - 12:00. At 9:45 the doorbell rang and Keith from Cox was at the door. He said he was running a few minutes early and asked if it was OK to start early, if not he would wait. I assured him that starting early was no problem. He had two cable cards in his hand along with his notebook. I started to show him the procedures but he told me he had installed many of these previously and really didn't need the instructions. I asked him, how many? He said, over 50. I told him in that case, I would just stay out of the way.

He promptly started the process by taking the first card out of it's plastic wrapper, inserting it into slot one, and with the remote quickly navigated to the appropriate screens. Since he did not have to look at the buttons on the remote while navigating, I was very sure he had done this many times in the past. He then noted the appropriate card numbers in his notepad from the TiVo screen, called the Cox office and authenticated the first card, and repeated the process for the second card. He was all finished in fifteen minutes. He explained about re-doing the guided setup and was out the door about 10:05. I re-ran the setup to get all of the HD channels and everything completed by 11:00.

To put it mildly, I am very happy with the experience. Everything is working fantastic and I think Cox did an excellent job in this situation. I know all cable companies have issues, but at least in my situation, they could not have done it better. A big thank you to Keith and all the dedicated installers like him who do a great job.

To put it mildly, I am very happy with the experience. Everything is working fantastic and I think Cox did an excellent job in this situation. I know all cable companies have issues, but at least in my situation, they could not have done it better. A big thank you to Keith and all the dedicated installers like him who do a great job.

I wish all of you the same luck in your setups.

Glad your install went well. You should call and commend him and suggest he spread his knowledge. Your install experience is atypical for Cox.

I already had an S3. I purchased a Tivo HD last weekend, and got an install appt on Monday. Cox would not hand out M cards so the tech showed up with 2 S cards. One of them would only get the HD Locals, no premium HD, Discovery or TNT HD, or analog or digital stations. He rebooted the TIVO and it took too long, so he left. He did not have a spare cable card. Installer 2 showed up the next day tinkered with the Tivo and fixed nothing. I had to wait 2 days for another appointment, and the installer #3 showed up with an M card....works great!

FYI - Cox Las Vegas now has M-Cards. I've got an appointment for Saturday for them to swap my two S-Cards with an M-Card, which should save me $7/mo. So after the $30 charge, it'll take me 4 months to just to recoup the install.... ugh why cant I self install...

You can get Center Ice. I have it with cableCARDS. And you can order PPV by calling it in. It's a one way device. You just can't order by remote.

I'm running into difficulty getting Cox (Phoenix) to authorize my cablecards for the Center Ice package. Most of the people I talk to claim it's not possible (though I know otherwise) and the few people I've talked to who say it certainly is possible don't seem to know exactly how to provision it correctly. I'm calling again tonight and hopefully will connect with a supervisor.

Has anyone found the magic bullet? What exactly are the technical terms of what needs to be done so my cards are authorized?

Please keep us posted as to how this goes. I'm in Phx and I'd like to order the UFC event next week. But I don't want to have to spend hours arguing with them after it doesn't work and they still charge me :-)
Steve
Gilbert, AZ

I just called back tonight. I spoke with a woman who immediately said she knew what the issue was: "It's not setup for your cablecards, let me get my supervisor to add it". She put me on hold for a bit and then when she came back she said "Actually, my supervisor says that the Pay Per View channels are sent on a seperate signal and the Tivo doesn't know how find it"

This is insane. I'm now going to call Tivo and see if they can assist. It seems that there needs to be some direct communication between Tivo and Cox to rectify this.

Just got off the phone with Scott from Tivo support. He took down my information and indicated there should not be any reason why I would not be able to view the Center Ice package.. ESPECIALLY since it was working just fine during the free preview. This appearantly negates any possibility of something like SDV being a factor.

Scott indicated he would send my information to Tivo's legal dept which would then contact Cox and inform them that they are mandated by the FCC to provide me this service. He doesn't expect any issues as this is pretty commonly reported per him, but said I would get a call back in 4-5 days with the results (either success or a more detailed technical explanation of why Cox truely cannot provide the package to me).

Overall, not too bad at all - the only thing remaining to see is whether my bill will be accurate to the price they quoted me.

Interesting. When I scheduled for a single m-card install they didn't quote me any price for the service (I should have thought to ask). I just looked at my bill online tonight and apparently they're going to try and charge me $55 for the install.

I think I'll be playing "angry customer" in the morning and see where that gets me..

Cox in Oklahoma City showed up at 4:30pm, and finally left at 7:30pm with no working CableCard in my new TiVo HD.

I thought I was in luck when he arrived and said he had just done one of these with a TiVo and it went smooth as silk. Then, he tried to look for the CableCard slot in my TV. It went downhill from there.

At one point he has me on his cell phone with someone in their office who has a TiVo, and she's telling me I have to download the firmware upgrades for TiVo before they can even have their CableCard work. After these alleged firmwares download to my TiVo, I have to tune to channel 30. Oh, and I have to have a phone line connected to the TiVo through all of this, but after it's up and going I don't.

I'm starting to think I might be more familiar with TiVo than they are.

The topper for the evening was my Cox installer yelling at TiVo's tech support because they "won't listen." After all, he's been installing cable for 14 years. (Though this was only his second CableCard installation.) He finally leaves the house, leaving me to deal with the TiVo support guy.

I told TiVo I would call back tomorrow, and lied to the Cox guy to get him to leave. I told him TiVo said they would reload all their updates for me overnight and see if that solves the problem.

He apologized for his behavior and said he would try to schedule a tech to come out in the morning. My goal is to wake up early and work with TiVo tech support and hopefully resolve it before they show up.

As far as CableCards go, TiVo sure seems to know what they are talking about - certainly more than the cable folks. And, I have to wonder if the frustration is intentional - like perhaps I'll ditch TiVo and go with their DVR because it's easier to hook up.

As far as CableCards go, TiVo sure seems to know what they are talking about - certainly more than the cable folks. And, I have to wonder if the frustration is intentional - like perhaps I'll ditch TiVo and go with their DVR because it's easier to hook up.

Bingo! That is the absolute truth. Not on the part of the installer but the cable companies. And it's so incredibly stupid. They would rather rent you a DVR for $15 and deal with all of the training, tech support, and hardware support with no long term contract than rent you a pair of cable cards for $4-5, an additional outlet for $1.75, an additional "digital gateway" for $5, offload training and support to a third party, and have a customer that's locked into their service for 1, 2, or 3 years.

It boggles the mind. Would you rather have someone pay you $15/month with no guarantee that they're going to stick around or $12/month guaranteed for the next three years? Cable companies should be falling all over themselves to get customers to hook up cablecard devices. Instead, they provide inadequate training and all but force people to settle for inferior equipment. Brilliant strategy.

Meh, so the subcontractor shows up WITHOUT the M-stream Cable card (he showed up with two S-Cards). Now the appt is for Thursday night. Wonderful. Because I wanted to drag my ass out of bed at 7AM on a Saturday for nothing. When I wake up in a few hours, I'll call Cox and demand a credit and see where I get (considering they're charging me $30 for the install).

It boggles the mind. Would you rather have someone pay you $15/month with no guarantee that they're going to stick around or $12/month guaranteed for the next three years? Cable companies should be falling all over themselves to get customers to hook up cablecard devices. Instead, they provide inadequate training and all but force people to settle for inferior equipment. Brilliant strategy.

I think you're assuming that the average cable customer is like you/me/us? Most people don't feel differences between cable/sat/tivo/etc offerings are worth the effort to make the change. Simply getting all the major networks (not even in HD) and maybe HBO is all they care about. In essence, people are already locked in due to their own unwilingness to see the greener pasture on the other side of the fence and make the jump. So with that, why would the cable companies want to make the kind of investment you speak of above if the ROI is not there today or in the relatively near future?

This will of course change over time, but it's not the case today. As we see more kids who grew up with computers/DVRs turn into customers, I think the cable companies will respond with the enhanced training/devices. This may be 3-7 years out in my estimation.

They have. I just got the Tivo HD and had my CableCard installed yesterday (10/13). The guy that came was a contractor and knew enough, but he was going through the setup of the second card and getting confused by an error message when I noticed that it said "multi stream" on the TV screen next to Card 1 that had already been inserted. I asked him to try it out with only one card since it was multi-stream. He said that it wouldn't work, but was willing to humor me. It did work . . . . so that was that. When he left, he said "I hope I don't have to come back in the next few days to install the second card".

This synopsis makes him sound rude, but he really wasn't. The two takeaways from my experience are 1) Cox does have multi-stream cards in AZ, and 2) the people that work with customers don't seem to know much about it (like everything else.

I have been reading this post and was curious of something. I am thinking of getting a new HD-Tivo S3 unit with the 2 cable cards on it. I have seen mention of S-Cards and M-Cards, what is the difference of these cards and which has the better benefits. Also does Tivo use both?

ALso, what is the general thought on how the Tivo S3 works with cable cards? Any main problems or glitches?

They have. I just got the Tivo HD and had my CableCard installed yesterday (10/13). The guy that came was a contractor and knew enough, but he was going through the setup of the second card and getting confused by an error message when I noticed that it said "multi stream" on the TV screen next to Card 1 that had already been inserted. I asked him to try it out with only one card since it was multi-stream. He said that it wouldn't work, but was willing to humor me. It did work . . . . so that was that. When he left, he said "I hope I don't have to come back in the next few days to install the second card".

This synopsis makes him sound rude, but he really wasn't. The two takeaways from my experience are 1) Cox does have multi-stream cards in AZ, and 2) the people that work with customers don't seem to know much about it (like everything else.

But you did not actually ask Cox to bring an M-card, right? As of this morning, they told me they did not carry them when I called to inquire. I'm looking at buying a Tivo HD in the next week or so. Would be nice to just have to use one card and save $4.00 a month.

Quick follow up... Cox was supposed to show up between 8-10am Saturday. They didn't show. I got on the phone with TiVo, who tried to conference in Cox tech support. We couldn't get an answer - we sat on hold until the automated message started repeating non-stop. Twice.

The wife called and chewed out Cox, and the agreed to show up between 4-7pm. They showed up at 6:50pm.

Turns out that on Cox's end they had everything configured as though it were going to my HDTV directly. Once they changed their configuration so it showed the signal going to my TiVo, everything worked perfectly.

It's asinine. From the very start there was no question on their end that this was going to a TiVo. It's just plain incompetence.

Quite possibly the easiest and quickest CableCard installation I've heard of. The guy was done in 10 minutes. Took out the two Scards, put in the Mcard, emailed in the numbers to Cox HQ, got an email back in a few minutes saying it was provisioned and it worked fine.

I'm floored Cox was able to provide a flawless experience this time around (as opposed to Saturday morning when the guy came out without any Mcards).

Are you receiving all the HD channels recently introduced in Vegas? I have a S3 with two Scards and have not started receiving any of the recently introduced HD channels such as 702 NGCHD or 703 HSTRYHD. Are you receiving those, for example?

has anyone managed to mget Cox to waive the indstallation fees for a second cable card? I think paying $100 for installation is unreasonable.

edit:

first person told me no, second person took $20 off each install. That's more reasonable. Funny how things are so messed up...first person had told me they could install tomorrow morning, this guy said next date was next Friday.

Thought some of you would be interested to know... Cox Orange County just installed my 2nd and 3rd Tivo HD units. I was able to get the customer service person to waive all the install fees (she was very nice, did so without my asking). Interestingly, the installer brought 4 (Motorola) M-Cards instead of the S-Cards I'd been given before! Apparently they'd just gotten them in and were out of S-Cards. The installer was even nice enough to swap out my 1st Tivo HD box's S-Cards. So I now have 3 M-Card CableCARDs, one in each of my Tivo HD units! A tidy $6/mo savings.